Hello and here we are again ready to shoot some landscape photography in
today's video what I thought I would do is spend this video talking a little bit
more about landscape photography settings it's something a lot of you
asked me about a lot so today I will show you my process. Also today's episode
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In a lot of my other videos I talk quite a bit about composition and how I
visualize a shot, how I then set the camera up, position it, the perspective
all that type of thing which is how I capture the scene in front of me. I've
been a little bit reluctant though to talk about the camera settings but this
video is dedicated to that. When I first attach my camera to the
tripod I'm always going to switch it into manual mode because I think that....
or I want the camera to be an extension of my arm, of my body, or just when I put
it on a tripod it's an extension of me and to do that or to achieve that I
think you need to have full control over what the camera is doing so manual mode
is the place to be I then it will always shoot in RAW I just don't see any reason
not to shoot in RAW after that I then think about the exposure triangle now
that's the relationship between aperture shutter speed and ISO I've got an ebook
if you want to download that that explains all of them in detail but it's
essentially balancing the exposure triangle to get the right effect or the
right exposure for you. So I'll generally start with ISO and ISO 100 is going to
work for the vast majority of situations there are some times when you might up it a
bit to get the shutter speed up as well but most of the time I'm going iso 100
After that I'm going to think about the aperture and I use the aperture to
adjust my depth of field mostly if I have something in my foreground that's
quite close to the front of the lens then I'm going to have a higher aperture
number which means a smaller actual aperture so usually around f/16 you'll
be able to get everything in focus but if you don't have anything particularly
close to the front of the lens then I want to maximize the sharpness that the
lens provides and I'm going towards f/8 that's around the area where you're
gonna get maximum sharpness sometimes you'll go to f/11 dependent on that
foreground again but f/8, f/11 or f/16 will be the vast majority of my shots.
I then just use the shutter speed to I just roll the shutter speed up and down
to get the right exposure I will use it creatively
sometimes with long exposures but that's how I use the shutter speed just to
get the exposure right so if you can master the settings on your camera get
that manual mode nailed down then that's when it's a bit like driving a car just
becomes second nature you won't remember your journey or what you've done on your
camera and then you just really start getting those creative juices flowing
okay so that's that I'm gonna pack the stuff into the bag again I want to get
a shot taken
so I found this beautiful little cove here with this tremendously impressive
waterfall. When you want to practice your landscape photography settings in
manual mode there's nothing better than finding a waterfall and there are lots
of them when you're shooting in the UK so I've got my shot composed here I'm at
a vertical and I'm just getting the stream leading you up into that
waterfall and then that waterfall is prominent in the shot. The sky above has
a few flakes of blue and a bit of cloud in there as well and I'm managing to
capture that all in one frame because the dynamic range of my camera is pretty
good and it's relatively good light for shooting this sort of shot so all I'm
doing here is because I'm not using any filters other than the circular
polarizer to take the glare off the shot off the water that is.... I'm at f/22. I'm or
I'm working between f/18 and f/22 when we're thinking about the exposure
triangle that I talked about earlier what that allows me to do because I'm
reducing the amount of light coming into the camera
I can then increase my shutter speed and I'm at..... I'm only at one quarter of a
second and that f/22 aperture in the current lighting is allowing me to do
that and what that does is just let the water move through the frame for about a
quarter of a second and it gives you that nice bit of movement in the water
ISO for this shot is at 100 I want the least amount of sensitivity from the
sensor and I want a nice clean image which is so 100 gives me so I'm gonna
wait for the light to go overcast again and then I'm going to capture this
shot beautiful scene let's shoot it.
okay so I'm pretty much back where I started at Ribblehead Viaduct this is
a composition I have shot before last time I did a vlog here it's a really
nice composition. You get a good view of the viaduct and then you get the Ingleborough
mountain in the background and that's the same composition that I've gone for
today but today I'm going to use it to show you what I do to get the exposure
right how do i meter my shot? First thing I do is like I said get the exposure
triangle right with the sort of creative way I want to have it so I'm f/16 here
because I've got some of these Reed's in the foreground of the shot and I want
them to be sharp and I want them to be within my depth of field so I'm at f/16
I'm ISO 100 I'm then at a 1/10 of a second and the way I go about getting
that exposure is firstly I will look at the meter, the built-in meter, on the
camera a lot of the time it will then be okay but I will then check it using the
live view mode so I just click into Iive view it pops up on the screen
and you can use the LCD screen itself to see how the image will look I will then
use the histogram to get it as spot-on as possible so my histogram here is
looking pretty good it's not peaking to the left with the blacks it's not
peaking to the right with the highlights and then I'm not going off the top which
means it's over exposing for that certain colour tone I also use it for
focusing a lot of time because the focus on this camera using the live view is
absolutely perfect if you camera doesn't have the touch to
focus on the LCD screen look through the viewfinder focus in
then switch the automatic focus off so you then in manual focus that's focusing
and metering let's take the shot. Two second timer is on there so it doesn't
move around and that is looking really good
okay so I am set up for my final shot of the day and this is my composition
pretty much with the viaduct going left to right in the scene and then I'm
hoping to get lots of beautiful golden light on that viaduct shining through
with some big shadows and that should look really good. I've got the camera
really low down on the floor because I'm on this limestone ledge and I want the
ledge to appear as if it is right in the frame in the foreground and then just
leads you in straight up to the viaduct without getting all of this sort of
rubble and rubbish from this old cave system here. Settings wise I am at f/16
because that stone ledge is right in the foreground and very very close to the
lens it's still looking sharp at f/16 so I'm happy with that
i'm at iso 100 again and when you are shooting the sunset you are always going
to have a much brighter sky than you are in the foreground so balancing the
exposure is the challenge with a shot like this you've either got bracketing
or you've got ND grads, I use bracketing because it's easier. I usually do two stops
either side that's what I'm doing here and it's going to be a really nice scene
when sunset comes I'm gonna capture that moment it's actually gonna come just
before sunset because it's gonna dip behind mountain there first but I hope
you have got some value out of just seeing how I go about using my landscape
photography settings because once you master it you then just don't need to
worry about it in future and partly that's why I haven't included in my
videos up to now because I don't want it to be the thing you focus on it's not
the camera settings that are going to make you a great landscape photographer
it's about the visualization about getting out actually into these amazing
landscapes and then just putting your personality into your photographs and
the camera settings are purely a technical thing that you just need to master you
can then explore all those other things that I was talking about before.
So I hope you've enjoyed the video it is sponsored by Squarespace now..... go to
Squarespace.com to start your free trial today and go to Squarespace.com/firstman
to get 10% off your first purchase and if you could leave a
comment down below let me know what you think of the video and have a bit of a
discussion about what settings you use because I'm learning from you I hope
you're learning a few things from me as well and it should hopefully
benefit all of us. Anyway, I'll see you on another video
very very soon I'm Adam this is First Man Photography
in the Yorkshire Dales absolutely stunning
Out!!